Consumerism no cure for depression: Prince Charles

The Prince of Wales has delivered an impassioned plea against
Western civilisation's burgeoning consumerism, warning that it is
leading to an increasing dislocation between humanity and
nature.

In a considered and clearly personal speech to the Foreign Press
Association of London last night, Prince Charles questioned if what
is called "progress" is not the cause of both the credit crunch and
what he called the "climate crunch".

He said his consistent public criticism of the tenets of
scientific modernist rationalism had attracted "some high calibre
invective" against him.

However he remained both "undeterred" and increasingly keen to
expend his energy in identifying and bringing attention to issues
where its effects have "manifested more virulently".

Speaking at the Park Lane Hotel at the annual Foreign Press
Association media awards, Prince Charles said he believed that
living in an age in which technological ease had become an
accustomed and easy part of life had also contributed to a loss of
natural connection with nature and its patterns.

This, he argued, has led to a loosening of what he described as
man's inner moorings, shifting a natural orientation outward onto
"something extraneous to us".

And he asked if the increasing dependence on technology had
begun to make human beings also believe - like the modernists -
that they and the world are merely part of "some enormous
mechanical process".

"It was a question from a newspaper correspondent back in the
1930s that drew from Mahatma Ghandi one of his pithiest responses.
During a visit to Britain, he was asked what he thought of Western
civilisation, to which he replied: "It would be a very good
idea."

"Ghandi realised that humanity has a natural tendency to consume
and that if there are no limits on that tendency we can become
obsessed simply with satisfying our desires. The desire grows ever
more potent as we consume even more, even though we achieve very
little of the satisfaction we desire. Is this not so in the Western
world today?"

Prince Charles said that, despite enormous levels of consumption
in developed nations, more and more people admitted to feeling
dissatisfied and depressed and neurological and sociological
research is showing similar results.

He said a report by a Children's Society in Britain had recently
revealed that the desire by children to have the newest toys and
clothing had resulted in high rates of depression and this was
particularly so for those from poorer backgrounds.

"One of the downsides of consumerism, it seems to me, is that it
forces us to compromise on issues that should not be compromised.
I'm sure there are many people who know that it is wrong to plunder
the Earth's treasures as recklessly as we do, but the comprehensive
world view which we now inhabit persuades us that such destruction
is justified because of the freedom it brings us, not to say the
profits," he said.

"In other words, our tendency to consume is legitimised by a
view of the world that puts humanity at the centre of things,
operating with an absolute right over nature. And that makes it a
very dangerous world view indeed."